


hold on to that feeling

by infiniteandsmall



Series: what are you waiting for, kiss her, kiss her [2]
Category: Glee, Homestuck
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:10:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteandsmall/pseuds/infiniteandsmall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is so not Mercedes’ scene. It’s not that she’s opposed to the idea of going out, getting a few drinks, and dancing until her feet hurt. It is not any sort of righteous indignation, which she’s sure Kurt would be feeling, over the cracked red pleather seats of the barstools or the huge crystal ball missing 30% of its crystals spinning overhead like the most spangled tacky sun to ever rise.<br/>~<br/>In which Mercedes Jones encounters an unusual DJ in LA (for intoabar on dreamwidth).</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold on to that feeling

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the intoabar ficathon right here: http://intoabar.dreamwidth.org/  
> My prompt was for Mercedes Jones to meet Dave Strider and the next thing I knew there was this massive 'verse in which Mercedes Jones has a tremendous crush on Jade. Featuring dumbass terrible ironic mashups I present: MERCEDES JONES HAS A TREMENDOUS CRUSH ON JADE HARLEY EEEE.

It is so not Mercedes’ scene. It’s not that she’s opposed to the idea of going out, getting a few drinks, and dancing until her feet hurt. It is not any sort of righteous indignation, which she’s sure Kurt would be feeling, over the cracked red pleather seats of the barstools or the huge crystal ball missing 30% of its crystals spinning overhead like the most spangled tacky sun to ever rise. Her dress is solid sequins and so she’s got no place to talk. It is the atmosphere. Everyone here seems to be white and share the common goal of getting laid. It’s Puck’s kind of place, Mercedes thinks wryly. She’s wondering why she put on her heels for this. She’s also wondering if she should revoke Puck’s couch-crashing privileges, at least on the nights when he’s just stayed too late eating Chinese food and being ridiculous. He might still be allowed to stay when he’s been sexiled.

Maybe.

If he shows up soon.

That she does not belong in LA, that LA will never be hers, that she will end up going home in defeat and having exactly the life of 2.5 children and a white picket fence that all her older relatives had wanted her to have. Because she is the nice girl next door and not a diva, not a big city star, and she feels her throat closing up funny, surrounded by people grinding and goddamn it _where is that boy_?

She focuses on the music and takes deep breaths and counts to ten, her go-to-method of suppressing feelings like crying in a bar. It works surprisingly well, the sharp stabs of synths and the chopping and compressed and pitch-changed vocals to—

Don’t Stop Believing?

She listens harder. It sounds like some kind of ungodly mashup of Don’t Stop Believing...and Ride Wit Me?

“Puck, you are going to get it when I get up there,” Mercedes mutters, and starts making her way through the crowd to the DJ booth.

 

The DJ who apparently created the ungodly mashup is not the middle-aged, spiked-hair and spray-tanned guy she expected.

He moves so fast he’s a blur, long dark fingers sliding switches and brushing disks. If the boy with spiky black hair and sharp blue eyes who’s twirling around and singing along is supposed to be guarding the entrance to the booth, he’s doing a terrible job, because Mercedes can just walk right in.

“And what can I help you with?” the DJ says, quick but lazy, saying the words like they’re some kind of in-joke as he turns around to face her.

He either has a very strong Midwestern accent or a very faint Southern one—he has the way of talking that makes all vowels sound a little like a’s, or at least a’s second cousins. Bleached hair with the dark roots showing a little on the back of his head, built skinny but it’s obvious that it’s not just the cut of his red suitjacket that’s giving him broad shoulders.

“Hey, could you tell me who requested that last song? The mashup—“

“A masterpiece, I know,” the kid says—and he really is a kid, Mercedes’ age or maybe a little younger. He reminds her of her dumbass cousins, if she’s honest, and it makes her feel both at home and completely foreign at the same time.

“That was the worst thing I have ever heard, and I’ve heard a hell of a lot of mashups,” Mercedes says.

“I know. It was probably one of the shittiest things I’ve ever made, and John here—“ Jerking his head towards the other boy, who cracked a bucktoothed grin and waves— “once requested the unholy threeway of the National Treasure theme, some goddamn Poison song, and You’re The Voice.”

“That sounds terrible,” Mercedes says, because it really does and this boy does not seem to care. She isn’t like Santana but she does like to have the chance tell it like it is to someone who seriously doesn’t give a shit if she does.

“It was. Probably my greatest life accomplishment or something. I’m gonna write the notes to it on my gravestone, carved in stone for eternity, Dave Strider created this, and I’ll rise from the dead just to watch weathered old men cry at the heartfelt beauty—“

The fact that he doesn’t even crack a smile as he spews all this bullshit is amusing. Besides, she’d rather be here then sitting at the bar scanning the crowd for Puck.

“Hey, I hate to interrupt such a moving monologue,” Mercedes cuts in, as he waxes poetic about the sandwiches of the children who will come sit at his grave, “but d’ya think you could play another mashup for me?”

He cocks his head to one side, eyebrows raised over the rims of his sunglasses. “And what would this be a mashup of?”

Mercedes grins. “You have Hate On Me in your library, right?”

 “Yeah, I do,” he says.

Mercedes thinks of another song to add, it has to be a terrible, terrible song that no one could take seriously, but it has to be something that will make Puck think of her, as well. She remembers that one disaster party at Rachel Berry’s, remembers when it got late and someone put on the song about the cake in the rain and Santana had cried her eyes out. She remembers leaning on Puck and laughing with him until their stomachs hurt as Santana sobbed about the guy never being able to make the cake again.

“And MacArthurPark?”

The corner of his mouth begins to quirk up. “Hell fucking yes.”

John is cackling and rubbing his hands together like it’s the Christmas morning of terrible songs, and Dave’s picking the song out of his iTunes library with one hands and moving some switches on his turntables with the other.

“And please excuse my atrocious manners,” his accent is definitely a light southern drawl, as he lays it on thick for dramatic effect. “I forgot to ask your name. It just clean slipped my mind.”

“Mercedes,” she says, “Mercedes Jones. But that’s Miss Mercedes Jones to you.”

“Of course,” he says, and tips an imaginary top hat.

 

Puck never shows up. She dances with John as Dave DJs, and she feels that stir in her chest, the feeling of someone making music just for her.

Because Dave does make it for them, it’s as though he times the beats to John’s spins and leaps and ridiculous booty shakes, and after a while Mercedes feels like a part of that. It makes her fiercely homesick and then fiercely happy. Dave plays ridiculous romantic songs for John and spins them into overly dramatic synth drops and John pretend to swoon. Dave claims this is the mating dance of the absolutely rude DJs possessing sickflows and mad beats. Dave’s finishing up the set when a pair of people begin wiggling their way through the dance floor to the DJ booth. At first, in the dim light, Mercedes thinks that maybe it’s Puck and someone he’s picked up, but as they get closer she can see its two girls.

“Hey!” John mouths, waving at them.

“Who’s that?” Mercedes says.

“Rose n’ Jade,” John says.

“Rose is my sister,” Dave says. “She’s a sarcastic and cold-hearted broad. Watch out for her.”

“Thank you for the introduction,” the shorter of the two girls says. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“Don’t you dare try any witchy magics on my turntables, I will drink your blood like apple juice. Rose, this is Mercedes, who has excellent taste. So excellent, in fact, that she’s decided to stick with me for the night.”

“It’s not as bad as that, is it?” Rose says.

“I’m sticking around so John won’t have to put up with you,” Mercedes says.

“A worthy endeavor, although John has to put up with him often enough,” Rose says, extending a hand. Mercedes takes it and shakes, and Rose says without smiling, “Charmed.” It still sounds like she means it. Mercedes likes her, with her pale pink hair and grape-purple lips and elegant hands and tidy velvet skirt and tentacle earrings. She dresses kind of like Tina used to but is not like Tina in the slightest, familiar but unfamiliar.

“And I’m Jade,” the other girl says. “John’s cousin. I’m just here to visit though, I’m not a city kind of girl!” Rose is built like her brother, very tall and lean. The fact that Jade is even taller than her is saying something. Mercedes feels awkward and fluttery, trying not to stare at the girl’s very muscular arms and _this has never happen to her with another girl, what is happening here?_

Jade has an easy smile and very white teeth. Her long, thick black hair is shiny enough to reflect the neon colors of the lights. She’s built powerful underneath her thin white tanktop and long blue skirt and it’s kind of hot, to be honest. Her clothes aren’t exactly what people usually wear to clubs, but Mercedes can’t imagine her wearing anything else.

Jade squeezes by Rose and clasps Mercedes’ hand in both of hers, big heavy hands with scars across the backs.

“So where are you from?” Mercedes says.

Jade kicks off her flats into the corner of the DJ booth. “I’m from an island out in the Pacific. It’s not on the map, it doesn’t really have a name, but Dave here likes to call it Hellmurder Island! I live there with my dog, Bec. We grow pumpkins and stuff, and I fly out to visit them all the time. I have my own biplane and it’s really fun to fly. Where are you from?”

“Nowhere that exciting. And I for sure don’t have a plane. More like the most boring town ever, Lima, Ohio,” Mercedes says. “I’m out here trying to get a record deal.”

“Kind of like Dave and his moive,” Jade says, nodding.

“Yeah, John told me about that,” Mercedes says. They exchange silent glances, and it’s not even necessary to say _Oh, Dave._ They just know.

Jade’s eyes are really, really, really green and Mercedes would like to stare at them for a while, or at the tan lines on her shoulders or the length of her eyelashes.

 

Dave drives a battered old grey van he refers to as “the meteor,” which makes John laugh and Rose press her lips together and Jade roll her eyes.

“Those were dark days,” Dave adds, which is probably some part of a mental tangent he is spinning out that the rest of them have not been privy too. He nudges Rose and John in the ribs as best he can while he’s trying to carry two amps at once across the parking lot.

“If you drop one of those on my foot you will pay the physical therapy bills,” Rose threatens.

“There. Last thing,” Dave says. “So who’s coming with me!”

“Me!” John says. “And I call shotgun.”

“You live with me.”

“So?”

“I can’t just leave my car here overnight, that thing has not been able to go the speed limit for twenty years and I would like to get home to Kanaya before I die, and I do not want to endure another shitty ninties powerballad singalong. I will be having a vastly superior ninties boyband singalong in my car,” Rose says, twirling her keys around her finger.

“The challenge is on!” Jade says, slipping her linked arm of out Mercedes’ to throw both hands in the air and wave them like she truly does not care. “Sorry, guys, I can’t resist the lure of N*Sync.”

“Who can?” Mercedes says.

“We will be including choice Spice Girls songs, ladies,” Dave calls from the depths of The Meteor’s trunk.

Rose and Jade pretty much ignore him.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Jade says, slipping her arm back into Mercedes'.

“Wait! Ask her if she has a pesterchum!” John calls.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Mercedes says.

“You should make one! I’ll give you my number, too, if you want,” Jade says.

“Of course,” Mercedes says, and Jade starts fishing around in her skirt pocket for a pen. She comes up with a green sharpie and inks the words “GardenGnostic” on Mercedes’ arm. “That’s my chumhandle,” she says. “So you could pester me. And here’s my number, too. I can give you Dave’s and the rests’.”

“I’ll text you with mine,” Mercedes says. “For sure.”

Jade grins and hugs her goodbye, and Dave hangs out the window to give her a high-five as The Meteor pulls out of the parking lot. From the music and voices echoing from the two cars, it is apparent that the singoffs have already begun.

Message received from Puck, 4:23

so soryr i didnt find u there was this gril and a lot of drikns and  this one fruiyt one and WOW

brunch tomorrw maybe dont gte mad but plz

no brunch to late i just wtan to die

Mercedes rolls her eyes at her phone. Maybe he’ll get to keep couch privileges.

Hell, she might even buy him some chocolate chip pancakes. She’ll let him grovel a little bit for appearances. 


End file.
